"Music for Silent Films" is a cross-disciplinary and cross-university teaching project that has been taking place in cooperation with the Hessian Film and Media Academy hFMA since 2011 and was awarded the Hessian Teaching Prize in 2021.

The concept is simple:

• HfMDK students compose new music for short films by students from the hFMA network of four film-making universities in Darmstadt, Kassel, Offenbach and Wiesbaden
• The results will be performed live to the film in public concerts by the Kammerphilharmonie Frankfurt, conducted by the composers.
• Students of the Sound and Music Production program at the Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences will make recordings, which they will then make available to the filmmakers and composers. For live streamed concerts, they are responsible for the live sound of the streaming concert.

For the participating HfMDK students, "Music for Silent Films" offers particularly practical and interdisciplinary experiences: It combines composition, music theory, arranging, improvisation, rehearsing and conducting - disciplines that are otherwise often treated in isolation during studies. The student conductors learn a lot through the collaboration with the Kammerphilharmonie Frankfurt, the filmmakers and the dedicated teachers, develop their personalities and musical skills, and engage with the art form of film.